OpenFront Money Guide — Gold, Cities, Ports and Factories

An OpenFront money guide has to answer one question first: where does gold actually come from? There are three sources, and they scale very differently. Passive income ticks up every second whether you do anything or not. Conquest pays lump sums for finished opponents. Trade, through ports and factories, produces the compounding income that decides long games. Understanding which one you are leaning on is the difference between a strong opening and a strong position.

Where Gold Comes From

The community wiki describes passive income as a flat rate of 100 gold per tick for human players, roughly 1,000 gold per second, while bots receive 50 per tick. Additional gold arrives from conquering players, bots and nations, from donations between allies, and from trading. The official client puts the same idea in the leaderboard, breaking income into gold per minute, ship trade, train trade and piracy, so you can see which of the three sources is actually carrying you. A cash reserve with a flat income line is a warning sign, not a safety net.

Source	How it pays	How it scales
Passive income	A flat rate every tick, reported as 100 per tick for humans	Never; it is the floor, not the plan
Conquest	A lump sum when you finish a player, bot or nation	With the number of opponents you can close out
Trade	Ships and trains pay both ends of a route	With route length and structure count
Donations	Allies can send gold directly	With diplomacy, not economy
Piracy	Captured trade ships switch their income to you	With enemy route value, and only while it lasts

The Full Gold Price Ladder

Prices in OpenFront scale with how many of a structure you already own, and a few pairs share a single ladder. The community wiki records the following costs, which the current community wiki confirms with minor rounding differences:

Purchase	Cost formula	Cap
City	125,000 x 2 to the city count	1,000,000
Port	125,000 x 2 to the port count	1,000,000
Factory	125,000 x 2 to the factory count	1,000,000
Warship	250,000 x (warship count + 1)	1,000,000
Defense Post	50,000 x (post count + 1)	250,000
SAM Launcher	1,500,000 then 3,000,000	3,000,000
Missile Silo	1,000,000 flat	1,000,000
Atom Bomb	750,000 flat	750,000
Hydrogen Bomb	5,000,000 flat	5,000,000
MIRV	25,000,000 plus 15,000,000 per earlier MIRV	Rising

Ports and factories share one ladder, so your first port costs 125,000 but the next factory will already cost 250,000, and vice versa. That is why most guides advise picking one to lean on early rather than splitting your spend.

Cities, Ports and Factories as Engines

Cities are not income buildings, but they are the best indirect investment in the game because maximum population is what your army grows into. Each city raises max population, and the community figure for that increase has shifted between patches, so treat exact per-city numbers as version-sensitive. Ports and factories are the direct income engines: a port sends a trade ship toward another port and pays both owners, with longer routes paying more, while a factory connects nearby cities and ports by rail and spawns trains that pay each station they visit. You can also earn from other players' trains and trade ships if their routes pass through your structures, which rewards placing your infrastructure on busy lines.

Reinvest or Hoard

The beginner walkthrough is unusually direct about this: do not sit on hundreds of thousands or millions of gold waiting for a perfect moment, because idle gold makes you weaker. The pattern that works is alternating purchases so you always have the next structure already paid for.

• Early: buy cities aggressively, adding one port or factory to keep income moving.
• Mid: keep expanding the cheaper end of the economy ladder instead of chasing an expensive tier.
• Late: hold a deliberate reserve only when you are closing on a silo, a SAM or a bomb.
• Always: match every missile silo with SAM coverage before you provoke a nuclear exchange.

Trade, Piracy and Donations

Trade is not automatically safe. Ports send trade ships on routes that pass other players, and an enemy warship can capture them, redirecting the income. The beginner guide frames a warship as a 250,000-gold entry ticket to piracy, which is cheap when your rival is running a long, rich route. Alliances matter here because an ally's warships will not capture your trade ships. Attacking or being attacked pauses trade with that player for five minutes or until you become allies again, so a war you did not plan can quietly cut your income as well as your army.

Reading Your Income

• Gold per minute: your passive baseline; it should never be your only number.
• Ship trade: the port economy; grows with route length and port count.
• Train trade: the factory economy; grows with station count, not just factory count.
• Piracy: captured trade; high early for a raider, unreliable once rivals screen their routes.
• Cash on hand: useful only when it is about to become a structure.